Eat with and Eat it up, the Edible Cutlery-Seaweed Solution to Plastic Bottle

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No to Plastics is the agenda of the year for the secure future. Breakfast, Lunch or dinner all are requiring the utensils and the spoons to serve the meals and then the problem is of cleaning the same. For cleaning the water is required, but the problem is also of conservation of water. The use of plastic is increasing day by day. The milk or other snacks are also coming in the pouches, which are not biodegradable. Hence, threat to the environment.

Hyderabad based Shri Narayana Peesapaty is an innovator of edible cutlery. His views are: We cannot change the World but we can change what is bad for the world. He has come out with the solution that an Edible Cutlery to eliminate plastic from the food chain.

Even water is also packed in the plastic bottles, to dispose of these plastic bottles are also the problem. these plastic bottles or the plastic bags are creating nuisance in the environment. Here are few developments in the world to replace the plastic.

Pointing at a solution to plastic packaging, Narayana Peesapaty from Hyderabad has designed an edible spoon made of millet flour that can be a proxy dessert after one's lunch or dinner, a media report said.

His new, innovative cutlery, which has already taken the market by storm, is now actively selling all over India, with major orders coming in from most of the metro cities, like Bangalore, Bombay, Delhi, Gurgaon, and Chandigarh. Thousands of orders have been placed by restaurants in these cities. In Bangalore, Café Coffee Day has already started to purchase from them, while other restaurants are still in cue to order.

“We are selling almost 74 lakh pieces in India alone,” said Peesapaty.

The concept of edible cutlery has also spread across the world as a biodegradable alternative of plastic, “There is a huge market for edible Cutlery,” claims Peesapaty. “We have got inquiries coming in from practically every country,” he exclaimed.

Skillfully promoting his objective to herald the global issues of sustainability, he says, “Our aim is to beat the plastic, and this is one of the reasons why I keep the prices low.”

Peesapaty, who is ready to experiment with internationally available locally sourced crops, explains that his aim is not to promote millets, but introduce an environment-friendly approach of sustainability, with less wastage and less usage of resources.

“I am not planning to produce in India and sell it abroad because it doesn’t make any sense to produce in India and create scarcity here. I can make these spoons from locally available raw materials like oats, corn, barley, and soya…” he reasons.

The entrepreneur has already received enquiries from the US, from where he got an order of 10 billion tonnes of spoons. Inquiries have also come in from Bali, Sumatra, Switzerland, Europe, Russia and all of north and South American countries.

“We have received interest from the likes of Disneyland, Walmart, Amazon, and a lot of other people worldwide, who have asked for our edible cutlery. But currently, I am looking at finishing my trial for the automatic machines, following which I am going to produce it in volumes and only then, will we consider selling it worldwide.” he adds.

While Bakeys currently produce only spoons, they are planning to design salad bowls as well, which will go well with their forks or spoons.

A UK startup is similarly making water containers from seaweed in the quest for food-based answers to the global problem of plastic, according to a report in The Guardian.

Likewise, many businesses around the world are pondering if consumers could actually chomp on their water bottles, plates and spoons once they have consumed the food packed in them.

There were reports in March of nano-plastic particles present in water bottles from well known brands posing serious threats to consumer health. This could well be the solution to such threats, the report said. Ooho water pouches from Skipping Rocks Lab, a UK-based sustainable packaging startup, are being made from seaweed for an esoteric post-beverage snack.

Though eating the water pouches might not be a reality at this point, they have received the thumbs up from French President Emmanuel Macron in December, as they offer a glimpse of a plastic-free future, the report said. These containers could also help save the oceans. The pouches encase a serving of water in a thin membrane made from brown algae. They were developed in London by Pierre-Yves Paslier and Rodrigo García Gonzalez, who claim seaweed is safe to eat and regrows quickly, too. Ooho's edible capsule and (another UK-made product) Herald's edible straw have both been pitched as potential alternatives to plastic, said Philip Chadwick, editor of Packaging News. "The ongoing plastics debate could mean that more edible packs will be developed."

Besides the UK firm, Indonesia's Evoware launched seaweed packaging in September that can wrap a burger or noodles. In New York, Loliware has come up with a cup you can eat, made from agar seaweed, and is working on an edible seaweed straw. Herald's edible straw is made in Barking. It is a sweet proposition, made from sugar, corn starch and jelly, and lasts 40 minutes inside a mojito before it starts to fall apart.

Peesapaty's edible spoons can be eaten up after polishing off a bowl of daal (pulses). In Poland, there are Biotrem's wheatbran plates you can scoff. However, Chadwick is not sure whether consumers would be comfortable eating the packaging? "Will it taste good? Would anyone want to eat packaging that has been handled by other shoppers,", the Guardian report wondered.